What would Jordan Spieth vs. Jon Rahm sound like? Would you watch Wyndham Morikawa vs. Collin Clark? What about Xander Schneffele vs. Tony Finau?
What if, in other words the Tour Championship were a match-play? What would be the next week’s East Lake Golf Club event in Atlanta?
The WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play was the lone match play event on the PGA Tour. It was held in Austin for the final time , in March. The schedule does not include any match play events.
There’s definitely room on the schedule to accommodate such a tournament. Why not apply the same format to the Tour Championship, which is a high-stakes event? We should do away with the staggered score format and introduce some head-tohead competition.
The Tour would have to add two golfers in order for it to work. To make a clean, neat bracket we’d need at least 32 golfers. It doesn’t seem that having the BMW top 32 instead of the current 30 would be a big deal.
A four-day tournament is also possible with 32 golfers. The Dell needed five days to compete with 64 golfers. The pod system was also used for the first 3 days, but that’s not what we need. This Tour Championship Match Play format (or whatever they call it) would be a “lose and go away” old-school style.
What would the matchups be in 2023? Here are the matchups based on the PGA Tour FedEx Cup standings:
- Scottie Scheffler (1) vs. Chris Kirk (32)
- Viktor Hovland (21) vs. Sahith theegala (31)
- Rory McIlroy (3 vs. Sepp Straka (30)
- Jon Rahm (4) against Jordan Spieth (29).
- Lucas Glover (5 vs. Tyrrell Haston (28)
- Max Homa (6) vs. Emiliano Grillo (27)
- Sam Burns (26), Patrick Cantlay (7), vs. Sam Cantlay (7).
- Jason Day (25) vs. Brian Harman (8).
- Wyndham Clark (9) vs. Collin Morikawa (24)
- Matt Fitzpatrick (10) vs. Adam Schenk (23)
- Tommy Fleetwood (11) vs. Nick Taylor (22)
- Russell Henley (12 vs. Taylor Moore 21)
- Keegan Bradley (13) vs. Si Woo Kim (20)
- Rickie Fowler (14) vs. Corey Conners (19)
- Xander Schauffele (15) vs. Tony Finau (18)
- Tom Kim (16) vs. Sungae Im (17)
We created this mock bracket just for fun.
The first place prize at the Tour Championship is still worth $18 Million. Total purse would remain at $75 million. The purse would still be $75 million.
The TV networks’ feelings about the matter could be a sticking point. CBS and NBC alternate as broadcast partners for all three playoffs events. There’s no way to guarantee that only the big names will advance, as they don’t want the risk of not having Scotties, Rorys and Rahms around.
It’s match play after all. Strange things can happen. It could be a great way to end the golf season for golf enthusiasts.
